How much longer can humans live on our planet?

Elon Musk famously wants to colonize Mars so that civilization can be “secured.” Accordingly, this headline in Popular Mechanics caught my eye: “Scientists Just Figured Out How Much Time Is Left for Life on Earth.” Would you like to know what they discovered? I certainly did, which made their “clickbait” work.

As it turned out, I need not have worried.

Some scientists apparently think that in five billion years, our planet will be swallowed whole by the Sun. But don’t get complacent: due to the Sun’s increasing luminosity, life on Earth will perish long before that celestial cataclysm occurs.

In fact, we now have only 1.8 billion years left.

If you’re like me, you don’t need to know more. But as I thought about my response, I realized that there is a factor at work here I need to understand.

“There will be peace and security in my days”

In Isaiah 39, the king of Babylon sent envoys with letters and a present to Hezekiah, king of Judah. Hezekiah in turn “showed them his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses” (v. 2).

Then the prophet Isaiah came to the king with this message from God:

Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lᴏʀᴅ. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon (vv. 6–7).

How did the king respond? “Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lᴏʀᴅ that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days’” (v. 8).

Such complacency and self-centeredness seem shocking, a response we surely would not make ourselves. But consider that Hezekiah is otherwise one of the heroes of the Bible. He cleansed the temple in the first year of his reign (2 Chronicles 29:3ff.), restored temple worship (vv. 20ff), led a massive Passover celebration (ch. 30), and organized the priests to function much more effectively (ch. 31).

In fact, the writer comments, “every work that he undertook in the service of the house of God and in accordance with the law and the commandments, seeking his God, he did with all his heart, and prospered” (v. 21). Then came the Assyrian King Sennacherib’s invasion, to which Hezekiah responded with such faithful courage that the Lord spared the nation (ch. 32).

If Hezekiah could presumptively assume that judgment in the future was irrelevant to his life in the present, so can I. So can you.

“Amend your ways and your deeds”

My thoughts were prompted by a passage I read today in my personal Bible study, where the Lord told Jeremiah,

If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it (Jeremiah 18:7–10).

As I read these words, it was clear to me which one described our secularized society most fully.

Jeremiah was sent to his broken people to declare, “Thus says the Lᴏʀᴅ, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds” (v. 11). However, they responded not with contrition and repentance but with anger against the prophet who declared God’s word to them, choosing to ridicule and ignore him (v. 18).

If we declare what he declared, we are likely to experience what he experienced.

We cannot awaken that which is dead

Where does this leave us?

You and I can ignore this article, assuming that the apparent lack of divine judgment on our nation today means we are secure tomorrow. Conversely, we can issue warnings to our nation in God’s name that he has not inspired, and become false prophets worthy of rejection and judgment.

It seems to me that we should at least admit that America needs the kind of spiritual awakening that would lead us into biblical morality and transform our culture. And we should recognize that this awakening will begin in our nation only after it begins in us.

You cannot “awaken” or “revive” that which is dead. Every American who does not know Jesus is spiritually “dead” in their “trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). If spiritual renewal is to come, it must first renew that which is spiritual.

As the Lord famously told Solomon, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). To lead our nation from the threat of divine judgment to the promise of divine blessing, we must first travel this way ourselves.

“What’s wrong with the world today?”

The story is told that a newspaper once sent an inquiry to several famous writers asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” To which GK Chesteron replied simply,

“Dear Sir,

I am.

Yours, G.K. Chesterton.”

How would you answer the question?